Big Tech

It’s Time To Imagine Chrome Without Google

Karina Montoya reflects on the end of the remedies phase of the Department of Justice’s case against Google for monopolizing the online search market. She argues that Google’s warnings against divestiture of its browser, Chrome, fall short and that a breakup will benefit the security of the internet, innovation, and users.

What the FTC v Meta Case Teaches About Big Tech Harms

Georgios Petropoulos, Geoffrey Parker and Marshall Van Alstyne review what the Meta antitrust case reveals about its merger and acquisition strategy and what lessons...

A Win for Meta Could Open the Television Broadcasting Market to Consolidation

Joseph Price writes that how the court in the Meta antitrust case determines the relevant product market may have implications for merger activity among television broadcasters, who have similarly argued that the regulators and courts use outdated market definitions to block consolidation.

What the Super-App Clash Between Apple and WeChat Reveals About Platform Competition

Regulators worldwide are debating how to rein in Big Tech's dominance over app distribution. Tiffany Tsai and Chuyue Tian explore how Apple’s clash with China’s WeChat complicates standard assumptions about platform competition and what it might mean for the next wave of antitrust enforcement.

Are Big Tech’s Quasi-Mergers With AI Startups Anticompetitive?

The Federal Trade Commission’s case against Meta for monopolizing personal social media through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp serves as a warning of allowing Big Tech companies to acquire nascent competitors in the artificial intelligence market through quasi-mergers that dodge government scrutiny. Based on new research, Alexandros Kazimirov argues that antitrust agencies can look at a combination of circumstantial evidence, including market product proximity, price premiums and product discontinuation, to help adjust their approach to keep AI markets contestable, rather than trying to restore contestability ten years from now.

Why Google’s Dominance in Search Persists – And How to Fix It

A new field experiment sheds light on why Google continues to dominate the search engine market despite regulatory interventions and the availability of alternatives. The authors find that while Google offers higher quality, consumer overestimation of this advantage—along with inattention and default effects—helps entrench its market power and limits the effectiveness of proposed antitrust remedies.

Trump May Change how the EU Thinks About Antitrust and Free Speech

The new Trump administration has thrust antitrust’s role in protecting free speech into the spotlight. Jan Polański discusses how this development should inform the European Union’s own debates about antitrust and free speech.

A TikTok Ban Would Raise Ad Prices on Meta and Harm Small Business

In new research, Dante Donati and Hortense Fong find that the brief TikTok outage in January benefited Meta as advertisers turned to its platforms to reach users. Small businesses, less able to switch, lost out.

The TikTok Ban Is a Case Study in American Political Economy 101

Utsav Gandhi relates recent developments in the American government’s ban on TikTok and shows how the case maps over broader debates about conflicts between...

Unconditional Revenue-Sharing By Google Would Still Be Anticompetitive Monopolization

Steven C. Salop argues that as part of any remedy outcome from the Google Search case, Google cannot be permitted to enter agreements with...

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